Greenhouse progress!

Michael and I are really having fun with our greenhouse and experimenting with different ways to grow things. We put a lot of things in containers including radishes, beets and carrots. Here's are carrots coming up great! I discovered I loved beets and we finished up one container and have started a second one.

Our hydroponic tube plants have just grown huge and wonderful. Here's a broccoli head that I am going to cut tomorrow. I think we will have several good things coming over the next three to four weeks from the tube grown food.

I'm really excited about our grapes and how well they are all growing. We have six grape vines now growing. Look at all of the baby grapes! Each little nodule is actually a future clump of grapes.

Floating lettuce and container update

Here is the picture I took when I put the lettuce in the floating bed on February 26.

Here is the same floating bed of lettuce on March 10 - 12 days later!


Here are the containers of carrots, radishes and beets on February 26th.

Here are those same containers (in backwards order) 12 days later!

I think we are on to something with our greenhouse crops!

Floating lettuce and other goodies!

We are trying various ways to grow plants in our greenhouse. We saw this idea from the University of Florida - floating lettuce. Underneath the styrofoam is a water nutrient reservoir. These have been in there a week and doubled in size.

We also replanted our tubes with broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. We lined them in black to help with the algie. We have a nutrient reservoir that circulates several times a day.

Here's a close up of the plants. We make our own pots!

Here are some early tomato plants that I started January 8th. I plan on putting these in big pots in the greenhouse soon.

I am trying to produce some carrots, radishes, baby greens and beets in pots. They are looking good right now!

We also have several broccoli plants that we potted. They are so healthy looking and green!

Go to the roots!

The middle of January we started some new plants for the greenhouse and early garden. We started them under lights in the house and took them outside during the day to the greenhouse but this past week has been so nice and mild that they are now living in the greenhouse.

We've had such success growing lettuce in the house that I have started carrots and beets in containers to grow inside under lights as an experiment. I plan to start some more for the greenhouse and then outside in a bed to see how they grow best this time of year.

Last fall when we started our little plants in the tubes, we had the fertilizer mix wrong and the plants had their roots burned. We bought some new type of fertilizer the first part of December and thought we'd keep the damaged plants going to see if we could tell a difference and experiment with them.

All I can say is wow! The plants grew and are deep green and we are actually getting a little bit of broccoli. I pulled these lettuce roots up out of the tube and was shocked at how many roots there were.

Healthy roots make healthy plants. I am transplanting some of the smaller broccoli plants into pots to make room for our new seedlings to go into the tubes. Here is another picture of the roots on the plants.

Lettuce and Tomato harvest!

We have had a learning experience over the winter with our greenhouse. We started out with the wrong fertilizer mixture and hurt the roots of the plants in our tubes. However, we got some different water soluble fertilizer and mixed it up to see what it would do for the plants.

Many roots came back and for the past six weeks they have taken off despite the shorter days. These plants were only about 3" high a month ago.

This head of lettuce is now ready to be cut. In fact, I cut it right after the picture was taken. It should keep growing. I'm excited on what we have learned. We are starting some new plants and hopefully will have another batch of plants to try.

Our downstairs lettuce has also grown. I took some pictures and blogged about it two weeks ago but now they also are ready for their first cutting.

I plan on trying carrots and beets indoors as well! I think we can do that. We have watered them about two times a week and they have organic soil to get their nutrients.

We are still getting some tomatoes each week from our tomato plants in the greenhouse. The plants look terrible but they were planted last July! I have some new ones started to replace them in another month or so!

Greenhouse growing!

The weather is really turning cooler and fall is here but I am hoping to get a little more from the fall garden including tomatoes, green beans and peppers. So, when a frost warning was sounded, we made some black plastic tarps to go over a few beds. It seemed to work for that night but we will have some colder nights this weekend!

We are finally growing in the greenhouse. These are lettuce ponds. The lettuce is in a small cup with a hole on the bottom sitting in styrofoam with liquid fertilizer in water underneath. I just aerate the water once a day and the lettuce will live and grow in the water medium.

This is our hydroponics and perlite tubes that we plan to grow broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, etc in through the winter.

The little plants were hurting waiting around but looked better over night. We pump the nutrients through the tubes 1-3 times a day depending on the weather and warmth. This will be fun to see how they turn out. We have three other tubes ready that we can put in the system as soon as I have a few more plants to try!

We are getting tomatoes off our greenhouse tomatoes and also eggplant. Either way, we have plans for the greenhouse which is a hobby and an adventure!

Garden Sweet Potatoes

On Thursday Ryan helped me dig up one of our beds of sweet potatoes. We have a half a bed in another part of the garden still to do. The potatoes got huge this year and some were the size of loaves of bread! They taste great. I think I am going to try to can some of them that were cut up when we took them out of the ground.

Michael and I also moved our potted plants down into the greenhouse where we want them and strung them up. We planned to put them in the middle area so when it gets cold we can put up some plastic walls and just heat that area. The lettuce, spinach, broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower will do fine in a colder area as long as it doesn't get too much below freezing.

We have our materials to build the hydroponics so that is our next big project.

New Steps

Michael has been busy this week with a lot of jobs and one of them was to build steps to go down the hill into the greenhouse. I didn't know how we would do it, but he had a plan and went to work.

Here's the finished product. The top step isn't slanted, but he put some extra wood and dirt in their to hopefully redirect the rainwater. We eventually want to build a swell to direct the water but in the meantime we were able to get some bales of hay and played them down the hill to help in the meantime.


Here is a picture of the new part of the garden. We probably have about 10 cantaloupe almost ready. I'm very disappointed in our corn as it just hasn't set many ears. In fact, I'm a little worried. Most years there have been a lot of bees around and I have hardly seen any and I think that is a factor. Our tomatoes started out setting fruit and after several days of rain the end of May, they are not setting fruit much even though the plants look beautiful. I may have to start hand pollinating them!

Air layers in the greenhouse

We are creeping closer and closer to getting the greenhouse finished. We double layered the walls and ceiling and yesterday Michael installed the blower and tubes going to the various walls and ceiling.

That gives us a layer of air insulation to help keep things air tight. The south end is not double plastic as it will have some doors we can open up for air to be pulled through by the blowers we will put up on the top.

Spring is slowly coming. Here is our tulip tree just about ready bloom!

Plastic on the Greenhouse!

After a winter of a lot of cold, wet and even snowy weekends, Michael finally had Spring break with descent weather that he he could work on the greenhouse.

Michael worked to finish up the framing and so late yesterday and early this morning before wind and rain, we put the plastic on the sides and top. I was brave and climbed up the ladder to help on the top!

That was no easy feat as there is a double layer of plastic because we are going to have a fan with air blowing in between the layers for insulation. The top piece was 40' x 20' that we folded over but Michael had such a wonderful idea to do it that we did it in less than an hour with just the two of us!

We still have a ways to go but having the plastic on and soon the doors, we will at least start to be able to use it while we set up the electricity, water and other things!

Garden and Greenhouse progress!

It's time to get caught back up on our backyard project! We've had a week of rainy days so it's been kind of muddy in the greenhouse area but with all of the mulch, I've been able to get into the garden.

We're ready to put on the roof of the storage building side of the greenhouse. The big poles are for the supports for the ribs of the greenhouse!

I've also got a fall garden going so our raised beds are still all full. These are the broccoli and brussel sprouts that I started in July. The broccoli is just starting to head up but it all looks beautiful. Behind them is a bed that still is producing a lot of peppers of various kinds and eggplant.

These are collards in another bed that includes a little lettuce and Swiss chard. Besides them are also several types of cabbage. They are best eaten after a frost so we'll be eating them later this fall.

We've also started peas and carrots. Usually in the red clay soil and heat they are hard to grow here in SC but with the raised beds, we should have some carrots without problems and with a fall garden, it's cooler for the peas. There are really a lot of crops you can plant in the fall. We just started picking a new crop of green beans.

Here are our sweet peas with edible pods. The rain was great for what I had planted including cauliflower, onions, and asparagus.

I've started some more seedlings to put out as soon as we have a little bit more room in the garden and maybe for the greenhouse! Boy we've enjoyed the garden and with the greenhouse we should have fresh vegetables year round!

Harper Stone Hedge

We have our neighbors all curious as to what we are doing! This is what the back yard looks like in preparation for a retaining wall we're going to put up with block to stop erosion on the hill.

Michael has gotten help from Duane Jones a good friend and a coworker of his to help with the concrete and block wall.

They are laying the footings and hope to have concrete poured for the foundation tomorrow!

We are surprised but it's about 9 1/2 feet rise in elevation from the bottom to top of what we terraced.

The Start of a Greenhouse transformation!

We have talked for a couple of years about having a greenhouse and so we took the plunge. At the lower part of our property, we planned to build a greenhouse and garden shed and then decided to terrace up the hill in four 12' areas so we can put in some more raised beds. These are the pictures of the process. This is Michael in the area where we plan to put the greenhouse.

Unfortunately, it looks pretty daunting when you see this much uncovered dirt. We knew there would be slopes but the amount to make things level was a little more than we anticipated.

This is the finished view from the high end where we will have our raised bed terraces.

This is the area where the greenhouse and shed will be built looking up to the terraces. Unfortunately, it looks pretty daunting when you see this much uncovered dirt. We knew there would be slopes but the amount to make things level was a little more than we anticipated.